The first company to offer food tours in the city, its guides divert epicureans from the expected fine-dining haunts and instead take them on trails of Old Dubai’s most impressive Middle Eastern eateries.

Frying Pan Adventures is the king of food tours in Dubai. It allows you to set aside the glitzy skyscrapers of the new Dubai, and chow down and restaurant-hop your way through old Dubai with an experienced local guide.

Frying Pan Adventures has since expanded into other food trails around Dubai, but the Middle Eastern Food Pilgrimage – lasting about four hours and costing Dh415 – is still the classic choice for unheralded surprises.

Road tripping with a falcon is the kind of unexpected and “only in Dubai” experience worthy of a wealth of hashtags that we’ve come to expect from outings with Arva Ahmed, the foodie tour guide behind Frying Pan Adventures.

The local duo behind Frying Pan Adventures might have a monopoly on food tours in the city, but for good reason. Indian sisters Arva and Farida Ahmed have lived in Dubai all their lives and they know their biryani from their baklava.

Bubbly Arva, who guides every tour, brings her encyclopaedic knowledge of food to every single dish and ingredient, so not only do you walk away with a bursting tummy, but a head full of historical foodie facts.

Thanks to local food tour company Frying Pan Adventures, it’s possible to taste Lebanese, Palestinian, Turkish and Persian cuisine in a three-km walking tour of this laid-back area north of the glitzy downtown.

Learn how to cook four traditional dishes from Dubai thanks to an award-winning Emirati chef and while doing so, learn about traditional ingredients and the cultural history behind each of these dishes.

Locals such as Ahmed are working on giving Dubai more depth and interest – to show it’s not just about the superficiality and feats of engineering and construction, but that there is more soul and meaning to the city than it likes to portray.

Arva helps us get our heads, and our hands, around traditional-style eating which involves making a small ball of food with the right hand and using the thumb to get it into our mouths. It’s a lot of fun and we soon get the hang of it.

Arva deliberately keeps the groups small, normally a maximum of seven or eight people, and attracts a mix of residents and tourists to maintain an intimate feel. If you want to discover secret Dubai, this is the experience for you

One of the tour’s aims is to showcase a side of Ramadan that one might only see in this old part of the city. Without giving away too much, prepare for some amazing Ramadan hospitality right on the pavement of the city.

Frying Pan Adventures are run by a delightful team of young women who are real food enthusiasts and are tapped in to what’s going on in the food scene in Dubai, with a particular focus on small independents in the older parts of town

Frying Pan Adventures, according to Ahmad, became the first company in Dubai to offer culturally immersive food tours. Every member of its six-member core is an insider — either raised in Dubai or with a deep connection to the city,

It is like dropping down a rabbit hole, at least some Arabian culinary version of it, and hanging out with a bunch of whimsical chefs in a series of hole-in-the-wall restaurants that have been hiding in plain sight in the old neighbourhoods of Dubai.

Take a Frying Pan Adventures food tour through Deira, one of the city’s oldest areas, to get a taste of the Middle Eastern cuisine and a better understanding of the various cultures that make up this modern metropolis.

Local start-up Frying Pan Adventures offers boutique food tours through some of the city’s backstreets, snacking on everything from stuffed Palestinian falafels to saffron-flavoured Persian ice cream along the way.

North African Iftar with Dubai One TV in Dubai

Arva's knowledge and enthusiasm has been infectious, and while my stomach is bulging I feel I've gained (apart from kilos) a terrific taste of Arabia while uncovering a "secret" Dubai gem amid the malls and skyscrapers.

The Food Lover’s Morning March, which runs from early morning till after lunch, is a fascinating immersion into a side of Dubai that promises to break the bubble of artifice and take us to where the “ordinary people” of Dubai shop and eat.

Ahmed is blessed with a knack of unearthing hidden food gems in old Dubai. She has an ability to make sense of this melee of restaurants (and the countless dishes that they serve) and home in on the items that they do best.

Frying Pan Adventures and the Heart of Sharjah project serve up the culture, tradition and foods that have stood the test of time in the old districts of Sharjah in a limited-edition tour – #savourSHJ trail – this month.

We’re on a food and photography tour called Unseen Trail: Market to Majlis, which aims to capture the grittier side of Dubai, away from sanitised malls and the pristine perfection of tall, dazzling buildings.

When, a little more than five years ago, Arva Ahmed founded Frying Pan Adventures, which offers walking and eating tours of the UAE, she did so with the intention of raising awareness of Emirati food and cooking.

The concept involves Arva guiding Dubai visitors and residents on a walking tour through a selection of well researched eateries in Old Dubai, along a particular regional theme, with plenty of eating pitstops at which to try signature dishes from the

From tiny Falafel shops where you can create your own spicy wraps, to bakeries selling baklava by the tray-load, Frying Pan Adventures gives a real snapshot of traditional Middle Eastern cuisine on its foodie walking tours.

Kaki Lima

Fill up on falafel in Deira Along with its eclectic mix of nationalities, it’s only natural that Dubai also harbours an impressive range of world cuisine. The best doesn’t come in swanky hotel restaurants or from Michelin-starred chefs, though.

Dubai is famed for its fancy five-star fare, but the real foodie gems lie in the back-streets of its Deira neighbourhood, where Yemeni, Iranian and Palestinian restaurants rub shoulders with Lebanese cafés.

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